Dual-core Haswell, desktop GeForce team up in Brix Gaming mini PC

Gigabyte is prepping another small-form-factor system targeting gamers. This latest addition to the Brix Gaming family combines a Haswell processor with discrete GeForce graphics pulled from Nvidia's desktop GPU family. The system was demoed at a Gigabyte press event in Las Vegas yesterday, and I snapped a quick picture before turning my attention to other products that I'm not yet at liberty to discuss.

This particular Brix Gaming config was shown at PAX East earlier this month, so the details are fair game. Under the hood lies a dual-core, quad-thread Core i5-4200H CPU clocked at 2.8GHz with a 3.4GHz Turbo peak. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 760 rides shotgun, giving the pint-sized rig a healthy dose of graphics grunt to go along with its potent CPU.

The Haswell chip has a 47W TDP, and desktop GTX 760 cards are rated for 170W, so there's an awful lot of heat to exhaust from the system. Unfortunately, the event was too loud to get a good sense of the machine's fan noise. The case felt warm to the touch during gaming, though, and there was clearly a blower whirring inside. The lower-power GeForce GTX 750 Ti might have been a better choice on the GPU front.

Apart from its beefy internals, the lime green Brix boasts dual SO-DIMM slots and support for both mSATA and 2.5" drives. 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity are included along with four USB 3.0 ports, dual HDMI outputs, and one Mini DisplayPort connector.

GeForce-equipped Brix Gaming rigs will be available next month, Gigabyte says, and the company is also readying a version with a Core i7 CPU. We may have to get one of these bite-sized systems in-house to see if it fares any better than the Iris-equipped Brix Pro we reviewed in March.